I created this blog to help those out who are thinking about attempting a quadruped walk cycle and might need some help in going about though if you've never animated before then i suggest not to use this till you have learnt as least the basics on how to animate in Maya and no your way round for the most part and understand how to use tools such as the graph editor. I will say however I'm no expert on animating and as a 2nd year animation student I still have a lot to learn so this should be used as more as a set of guide line rather then a follow the steps but hopefully a few of you out there might find this useful and be able to apply some of what i've learnt while creating a four legged walk cycle and by following what I do should be able to get the same outcomes even if applied to a different quadruped rig.
For the walk cycle I'm currently using maya 2011 on a mac book pro and the rig I'm using is a free to download rig call great dane which from use i've found to be a very good rig but obviously this doesn't mean this tutorial can't be applied to other rigs you may want to use or created yourself. Lastly i will include links to anything i've obtained through the internet at the bottom of the tutorial and also some sites that are very useful for free rigs and the like.
Great Dane Rig
Ok so lets begin!
Right so were not going to start with animating or going straight into maya just yet as theres something more crucial which needs to be done before hand which is the research as no one can just jump in and animate something be it a walk cycle or an explosion if they haven't researched it first.
So here the first thing your going to want to do is observe a dog walking of course to actually understand how they move and this can be done in any way be it through videos or actually studying the animal up close and once you've done this you'll be able to add your own style to a piece and exaggerate the movement but you can't do this until you actually understand how the animal moves. Since i don't own a dog I found the next best thing is videos and images and the best place for video footage is YouTube just for the sheer number of videos it has.
Now one thing that might be difficult is finding decent footage of a dog simply walking so you may find you need to be a bit more creative when looking so searching for others who have created quadruped walk cycles though be careful as you could find your using a walk cycle which doesn't actually move like the animal. It took me a while to find videos that i could use but had a brain wave when thinking how could you get an animal to run on the spot and i'm sure many have seen at one point a dog running on a treadmill and what would work better for watching a dog walk in one spot then a treadmill.
obviously images are much easier to find and had no trouble finding images of dog walk cycles which are perfect when working out all your keys before adding your in betweens but if you can't find any images yourself ts always to good to create your own so you have something other then videos to reference when animating.
Great dane walk cycle
Ok so lets start animating now and As with pretty much any program always start by setting up your work properly as its crucial you get into doing this otherwise your just going to get into all kinds of problems if your saving bits and pieces of your work all over the place so make sure you've set you project up correctly before starting to animate. Once this is done you should now open your scene up ready to start.
now i'll be doing an animate walk along a plane so first thing for me to do is move the rig to one side of a plane.
Not everyone will do this though it doesn't really make a difference wether you do this or have a walk cycle on the spot i just find this easier especially when timing a walk say if you wanted to move the dog from point A to Point B and not worry about working out the timing after you've animated the dog walking on the spot.
First thing were gonna do is my key frames so the points when the dogs paws are planted to ground so you should go through each position where the dogs paws are planted but remember not to move all the paws every time as with a walk cycle at least 2 paws will be on the flaw at a given time over wise your walk might look more like the animal is gliding along rather then actually walking so for the moment make sure that 2 feet are always still on each key frame you make and also refer back to your videos and images for reference of what feet should be where.
you should have something that if played will look like the dog is shuffling its paws along the ground now and you should use this to help work out how fast you want the walk cycle to be at this point.
next step should be to add the high points of the walk so the points where the dogs paws are at there highest in the air and again just refer to your images and videos for which feet should be in the air when the others are down and once this is done you should end up with a very basic walk.
What you should end up with after you've set your keys
Ok so we now have our key poses but clearly its not enough so next we move onto the rest of the body. this is where you need to think about where the videos and reference images come in really handy for judging where where the weight of the animal is and making the dog look more life like and believable rather then just a motionless robot. your going to want to look at how the dog moves his entire body and not just the legs so think how the dog might sway his body depending on the speed of the walk even thinking about factors like the ages of the animal as a younger dog is going to move with a bit more bounce in his step then a old dog that might almost look like he's dragging his whole weight across the ground.
Adding some sway in the head.
What you have to remember when adding in the movement of the body is to know if you move an arm or a leg that it with affect the connecting joints and muscles as well so when walking your affecting the whole balance of your body meaning you body will be twisting and and swaying with your movement to stop you from falling over and the same applies for any animal as well.
Here you can see i've added more of a sway in the body and arched and twisted the animals shoulders and hips as the legs come forward giving it a more realist and believable look
Now you should have something thats starting to look more believable though theirs still a bit to go before we can say its all working and there so next I'm gonna want to think about the secondary animation cleaning up anything that may seem to exaggerated for the rest of the movements. so your going to be thinking about the ears and tail and adding in them extra touches to finish of your animation so think about the sway for the tail as the rig moves and how the ears might be flopping about as the dog walks.
so now we should have a fully animated walk cycle
But hold on your probably thinking, this animation is looking very robotic still and you'd be right which is where we move onto the final step of any animating in maya the graph editor. This is where I will refine my animation and tweak it to add much better timing and smooth out anything that seems to rigid and robotic. so here i will sort out the for a start the timing of the feet as at the moment there too in sync with each other and clearly don't move in a way a dog would so were gonna want to change this first by just moving the curves on the graph editor and changing when the dog begins to lift the paw from the ground.
You'll find keeping you animation clean and tidy and not keying all over the place will make it much easier when it comes to using the graph editor.
so now its just a case of tweaking your animation to your preference and use your animation principles to correct anything thats breaking them and work out the timing in much more detail. So hopefully you now have a completely finished animation and have a walk cycle that your pleased with and once you've done it a few times and work out how to do a basic walk you should be able to start adding some real character into your walk cycles.
My final walk cycle
Heres and example of what can be achieved with some practice and understanding by a professional animator.
